So, it’s the time of year where we get our ‘Summer before Summer’. I don’t understand why people are always so shocked – we get a week or two of gorgeous weather in May/June, then more rain and cold wind until September, where it becomes ‘unseasonably’ warm. It’s an annual process – the last time I had sun on my birthday (25th August) was about three years ago.

The strange foibles of British summertime aside, I love this kind of weather. Yes, it’s too hot, I get sticky and uncomfortable and find it harder to breathe than normal, and working in a kitchen is like hell, but I love this kind of weather.

I love having cold showers. It is definitely one of life’s greatest small pleasures. Get up from a hot night’s sleep and get that bit of shopping done, or that urgent letter sent, or just wander into the crowded, sunny town centre. An hour later, you’re tired, hot and sticky with sweat. In this scenario, there is nothing better than getting home and throwing off your clothes (as summery and light as they may be) and turning that dial down to the blue section. You feel cool, clean and refreshed afterwards, and you can feel good for helping the environment a bit by not using the energy to heat the water up!

Everyone smiles more when the weather is nice. People have more fun. The world becomes a more cheerful place, full of bright colours and happy faces. I love this about the sunny weather. There are BBQs, walks in the park, late night laughs, and beautiful sunsets of the deepest orange. It makes me more optimistic that the world isn’t going to fade to black after all.

I’ve been in an interesting situation recently. Some of you might remember my entry from a few months ago, alluding to a ‘crush’ on a certain person. Despite my best efforts, this has failed time and again to get beyond the level of friendship. I get along with the person in question and find him attractive and funny, but I can’t force people into feelings that I’d like them to have.

Consequently, in an effort to forget about the ill-placed crush, I looked to other people that I know for comfort of a physical variety. As short lived as that was, I did realise that there’re more than just one guy in the world, and that I’m young and can do what I want. Keeping one eye on the particular guy, the other went roaming.

Contrary to (apparent) popular belief, I am not an attractive or interesting person. I am shy and uninteresting and always have trouble in social situations. But I am nothing if not determined. I looked everywhere I know for a potential spark. I found nothing.

I have recently rediscovered a social group that I was a part of last year – Roc Soc (Lancaster Uni Rock Music Society). The people in this group are wonderful – interesting and quirky and above all, accepting of my long absence from the group and welcoming upon my return. In light of this, I’ve been spending some more time with them recently outside of society socials. This has been wonderfully refreshing.

And in amongst this group of people is a particular guy, someone I’ve been friends with since I moved to Lancaster, someone who teases me mercilessly, someone who does the same course as my ex-boyfriend (freaky coincidence – there are three people in that year on that course and I know them all for different reasons), someone who is double my weight and a foot taller than me. Someone I had a sex-dream about in my first term of university. Someone I never expected.

We talked, laughed, flirted and kissed. It was a fabulous weekend. I am hopeful, in my naivety, that this might go somewhere. I am very aware of the fact that he is graduating very soon, and that his remaining in Lancaster rests on him finding a job and a place to live for next year (I understand that jobs relating to theoretical physics and maths are a scarce commodity in Lancaster). A long-distance relationship is unthinkable to me – I am too much of a fan of physical proximity and comfort for that, especially in my relatively unbalanced mental state.

I think it’s up to me to make this become something more than the occasional kiss in the dark at the club, the shy, short lived grasp of hands as we walk with people. And that’s a big challenge – I don’t trust myself with relationships, especially with ‘normal’ people like Chris. Will he be able to cope when I have a Very Bad Day? Will he understand my insecurities? This remains to be seen.

Speaking of my ‘relatively unbalanced mental state’, I received some texts on Saturday, the content of which would have greatly upset me had they come from any other person. As it is, the texts in question came from Promethean (aka Keen, Eager, New, Hobbit) Dan, someone who I have attempted to reach out to because they are a lonely and confused adolescent. I was always a firm believer that everyone can change with a little kindness and acceptance, but apparently I was mistaken.

Some excerpts from the messages I received (when he was in the same club as me, no less)

‘the only thing you have to deal with is how to walk into a convenient relationship’

‘You have everything better than me’

‘You’ve never had to fight for your relationships’

‘why should you get it so easy?’

‘All I get for my supposed friendship is threats’

‘Believe me, I’ve had more threats than you’ve had hot dinners’

I know not a lot of you know my character background, but those of you with some idea will be aware of how much I really don’t ‘have everything better’ than him. This kind of thing is incredibly frustrating to me. I want to be kind and supportive to everyone, but Dan has literally thrown it all back in my face. I tried so hard to make him understand that I have my own, very big problems (ie Depression, Anxiety etc) but he was never interested in anything else other than his own lack of a girlfriend. He claimed that he wanted to be friends with me, but ignored everything I ever told him about myself.

So this is me officially Giving Up On Someone. It doesn’t happen often, but he has pushed me too far.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get hot and sweaty in the sun (and love every second). I’ll leave you with this, which always makes me smile.

Like this:

So, after nearly a week on the new tablets, I finally got a decent night’s sleep last night after taking the absolute maximum amount of sleeping tablets allowed by the box. This made me sleep in until half one, which was a tad disappointing (because I wanted to go for lunch as usual). But, it was great to get a full night’s sleep for once.

I’ve been having horrendous insomnia, not falling asleep after lying in bed for hours, and then waking up very early, without having had enough sleep. This is not fun when it happens once, let alone after it reoccurs several days in a row.

It’s been an interesting week. I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with people that I wouldn’t necessarily spend time with on a regular basis otherwise. Monday night was Adam’s birthday, which was good fun – there were a lot of people there, including people who I know buy name/sight but that’s it, so I feel I got to know them a bit better.

Tuesday I went onto campus and had lunch (something I failed to do on Monday due to not realising where the usual suspects would be on a non-termtime lunch hour). Also met with Locrecia and Mair to do social sec related plotting. Look out LURPS, next term will be FUN. After that, I came home and started feeling pretty low. Did my best to stave it of by trying to not be on my own as much as possible – ate in spoons with Adam and Paul D. Went home still feeling pretty low but at least I had saved myself an hour or two of being alone.

Wednesday was a good day, Spent it in the company of Mr Slee and Mr B (aka the Craigs) and learned some very interesting things about LURPS and its members *cackles wildly*. After spending most of the day with these wonderful gentlemen, I went to pizza hut with some of the more ‘usual crowd’ including Simon, Mew and Stu.

At this point I was really feeling the lack of sleep. Agitated and nervy, I wanted out of pizza hut and to be at home with the right tools for the job of relieving the tension and pain inside me. But I was convinced to stay by the food (mmm pizza) and then by my friends – people telling me how good the film was (and they were right.) As much as I wanted to go home and be able to cry and cut myself and make the world seem smaller, I knew that this was not the right choice. It wasn’t what I should be doing. So I stayed, and went to the film, and then came home and took the sleeping pills.

Today, after waking up at half past one and being slightly disorientated for a while, I realised that it was a really quite beautiful day outside, and so went to Williamson Park (one of my favourite places in Lancaster). I sat for a while and thought about what I want to write, made a few notes, then spend nearly an hour talking with Andrew about various things of no great importance.

Every time I am there, I get blown away with the wonder of Williamson Park. Such a beautiful place – I am resolved to go there more often while the weather is acceptable. Might make it a daily thing on my way back from lunch on campus. If I make it a routine then it will help me get out of the house, something which has seemed quite pointless on several occasions since I stopped studying.

So, to the point of the post at last. I thought that Easter at Lancaster would be quite a boring thing, quite lonely and generally bad for my health, but no. It has been wonderful so far, spending time with people out of my usual ‘circle of friends’ and seeing that maybe I need to redefine the circle. I’ve met new people and discovered that I can feel things that I didn’t know I could anymore.

Now I’m looking forward to Locrecia’s housewarming tomorrow and Sanctuary on Saturday – both opportunities to find myself in the company of a certain someone who I like to be in the company of at the moment, and of course a whole load of other wonderous people.

Like this:

I have had something recently that I’ve not had for a very long time. I had a Good Weekend. Not all of it was good, some of it was in fact awful, but for the most part, it was Good. The Prozac has been making me feel woozy but the side effects are much less severe than with the citalopram.

Friday night saw Sam run a one-shot of All Flesh Must Be Eaten. He decided to do this at about half eight, so there was zombie related hilarity with Sam, Simon, Dan and Stu until about 2.30am. It wasn’t a great role-playing experience for me, I couldn’t get into character at all, but the OOC banter was fantastic.

Saturday was of course the LURPS Hog Roast. Brilliant stuff, delicious food and great company. I had some bad times there though, mostly because I made a joke in bad taste and managed to convince myself that it had made everyone who heard it hate me, so I wandered off and spent an hour sitting around on the floor on my own before anyone came to find me. But I did get to smear Jelly on Connor’s face, which was funny.

Saturday night was Rock It To The Lune, which was awesome. I’ve not been out dancing in such a long time that I’d forgotten how good it feels, especially in the company of people who don’t care that I look like I’m having a seizure on the dance floor. I danced and sung and had a brilliant time. I even won the raffle (kinda). Then Simon, Stu, John and I went on to Hustle, where we stayed for about eight minutes before coming back to my place to play Magic: The Gathering.

Today, I was supposed to be playing in the game Mr. Slee is running over Easter. However, I had a massive panic this morning that my current state of fail would ruin the game for all the other players and spoil all of the GM’s hard work. So, I bailed out and went to learn how to play Go in the Sun, which was great.

After Go, I hung out with Adam for a bit, played some MtG and lost some chess. Not known Adam for very long but had a great time, it’s nice to find more people who are easy to hang out with. After that, Justin hosted a MtG cube draft, which was fun. Justin, Simon, Stu, Girly Mike, Adam and myself played and it was ace fun.

And that brings us to now. I’m doing my utmost to keep happy, which is why I’ve written about the weekend, to remind myself of how good it was. It feels like I’m having a come-down, which I suppose in a way I am. But hopefully I’ll be ok.

Seems that recently something’s been happening to me that hasn’t happened since November 2008. I think I’m getting a crush on someone. It’s a very weird thing and I’m not sure what to do with it. Leave it alone for now, I think, and poke it more when I feel brave.

Anyway, I think I’m going to eat some chocolate raisins and play Civilization 4. And no, I won’t tell you who it is.